Specialization and Unique Gameplay

[hhyyrylainen]

Replying very late due to this thread appearing just as I headed out for my break.

@Titan

For example, a unique mechanic for hydrogen sulfide would be that if you consume too much of it, it will become toxic to you, causing damage. This itself would make the gameplay more interesting, as sometimes hydrogen sulfide would be something you seek, and another time it would be something you actively avoid.

This sounds exactly like the planned thermosynthesis gameplay (moving between host and cold spots, otherwise it stops working). Maybe it’d be better to implement this feature fully first before planning some new stuff to see how well it is received?

@Titan

This is what I’ve been leading towards. I propose a system of “specialization upgrades”, most likely to the nucleus. It would work like this, that every x generations or something, the player would have a choice out of 2 or 3 different “specializations” or “adaptations” or something based off of the player’s cell and the organelles it contains. The player would choose one of the options and would get it’s effect.

I think this goes a bit too hard in a “game” direction.

Fully agree with this:

@Deus

However, I think the gameplay mechanic you suggest - of offering a “perk” every three turns with the nucleus - is a bit at odds with the underlying philosophy of Thrive. When it comes to upgrades and specialization, we try to abide by a few principles:

@Deus

For an immediate step now, we can consider having oxygen vary between patches now - not dynamically, but having oxygen be lower in deeper patches for example. That way, players are forced to use different metabolisms.

This is a pretty easy to test idea, if anyone wants to make this change. I also don’t foresee it breaking the game balance too badly so it might be also easy to approve and merge in.

@Buckly

There is not really a good solution to this. Having a dedicated paid programmer is a huge boon, and will theoretically solve this issue. But Hh is understandably more focused on other things of import, and will likely be hunting bugs and handling major features related to progress instead of revamps or new features.

Yep, but I hope at least the latter half of 2024 can be basically all just working through the microbe roadmap for me. Which is also a bit of a problem as I plan to only really work on the roadmap items and skip anything not accepted onto the roadmap. The whole point of the roadmap is that we can at some point call the microbe stage done and move forward.

So the unfortunate truth is that these unique mechanics will need multiple enthusiastic volunteers to see them through. Otherwise they will just be forever on an idea level.

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@Titan

I would propose making a organizational board (similar to the one we had post ECS) detailing all the proposed features you mentioned, their status, at what level discussion is, and any related issues/dependencies.

Honestly having a board like that would make discussion and implementation of these features much easier. I’m also pretty sure these concepts do not have to be implemented as these batch chunks, instead be split up into more smaller, more manageable issues instead.

This could work. Emphasis on could even now most discussions kind of just fizzle out so who would be responsible for writing down stuff? It’s easy enough to open a new organization project on github where people can just write whatever ideas they want as drafts. But I foresee that becoming also a such a huge list that you cannot reasonably find anything there. It’ll be basically be the same as here on forums: use the search feature to see if what you want to talk about is already on the board / has a discussion thread.